U.S. Abandons Baghdad, Iran and Russia Move In
Bible prophecy describes the battle of Armageddon as a coalition of nations that will almost certainly include China and Russia and several Muslim nations of the Middle East. Every day, the evidence mounts that China will be tightly leagued with Russia and many of the Islamic nations in a powerful anti-Israel political and military alliance from which the 200-million-man army described in the book of Revelation (Rev. 9:16) will ultimately come. - The Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9The Chinese are buying physical assets – and not just representations of those assets in the form of paper receipts – but the actual physical commodities. And they are storing them in-country. Perhaps they’ve determined that U.S. and European debt are a losing proposition and it’s only a matter of time before the financial, economic and monetary systems of the West undergo a complete collapse. At best, what these signs indicate is that the People’s Republic of China is expecting the value of currencies (they have trillions in Western currency reserves) will deteriorate with respect to physical commodities. They are stocking up ahead of the carnage and buying what they can before their savings are hyper-inflated away. At worst, they may very well be getting ready for what geopolitical analyst Joel Skousen warned of in his documentary, Strategic Relocation, where he argued that some time in the next decade the Chinese and Russians may team up against the United States in a thermo-nuclear showdown. - Chinese Government and Large Chinese Corporations Have Been Systematically Buying Up U.S. Businesses, Homes, Farmland, Real Estate, Infrastructure and Natural Resources
How Putin outmaneuvered the US in resupplying the Iraqi military
July 9, 2014Yahoo News - Little noticed among the disturbing tableau of images coming out of Iraq in recent weeks is a changing of the guard evident at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). As the crisis has deepened, U.S. contractors, U.S. Embassy personnel and most of the U.S. service members from the embassy’s Office of Security Cooperation have abandoned the threatened capital. The exodus has coincided with Russian contractors and support personnel pouring into BIAP to help launch the 25 Russian SU-25 warplanes that Moscow is rushing to Iraq in its hour of need.
Thus in June U.S. contractors employed by Bell Helicopter, Beechcraft and General Dynamics Land Systems have all pulled their support personnel out of Iraq, depriving Iraqis of maintenance and repair for their U.S.-manufactured Bell ARH-407 armed reconnaissance helicopters, Beechcraft T-6 military trainer aircraft and M-1 tanks. Given the deteriorating security situation, a knowledgeable source says that virtually all U.S. contractor personnel have left Iraq.
“When the crisis worsened U.S. corporate leadership made a decision to pull all their guys out of Iraq, and the U.S. government took a hands-off approach that left those decisions up to each company,” said the U.S. source in Baghdad. “We’re discovering that U.S. companies in this crisis don’t have a high tolerance for risk. Unfortunately, the Russians are much more tolerant of risk.”
The retreat of U.S. contractor and embassy personnel, and failure to follow through in a timely fashion on U.S. promises of military equipment for Iraq, is feeding a widespread narrative of declining American influence and commitment to the Middle East. The perceived power vacuum as the U.S. military presence wanes has been noted by adversaries and allies alike.
Against U.S. wishes, Massoud Barzani, the president of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, declared that he will soon hold a referendum on Kurdish independence, reportedly with a green light from NATO ally Turkey. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly distanced itself from Washington in disagreements over U.S. nuclear talks with Iran, inaction in Syria and opposition to the military coup in Egypt. Critics say a pattern is developing of once staunch allies going their own way out of frustration with U.S. inaction.
The first of the SU-25s began arriving in Baghdad aboard Russian military transports last week. Speaking to the BBC, Al-Maliki complained that if Iraqi Security Forces had the necessary airpower represented by the F-16s, they could have turned back the juggernaut offensive launched by the Islamist militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and allies among the Sunni tribes.
“I’ll be frank and say that we were deluded when we signed the contract” for F-16s with the United States, Maliki told the BBC.
“God willing, within one week, this [SU-25] force will be effective and will destroy the terrorist dens,” said Maliki.The problem is indicative, sources say, of a U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program that is overly bureaucratic, unresponsive and vulnerable to political stonewalling. Requests must be approved by both the secretaries of state and defense, and then sent to the Congressional armed services, foreign affairs and appropriations committees, which carefully review the projects. The relevant U.S. ambassador and U.S. military commander for that region must also personally sign off on any proposed sale.
Approved recipients of U.S. military equipment under the FMS program must then complete a training course on human rights and humanitarian law, which includes seminars on respect for human rights and civilian authority, rules against torture and gender violence, and laws pertaining to international armed conflict and internal armed conflict.
“There have been multiple causes for delays, not all of which can be remedied,” the CRS report concluded. “Delivering defense articles and services to U.S. representatives in multiple partner nations, with national customs and import processes, presents unique challenges.”
“What’s happening with the crisis in Iraq today is shining a spotlight on what’s wrong more generally with the U.S. FMS program,” said a former senior U.S. defense official. “And with the Russians and Iranians now pouring into Baghdad to come to Iraq’s rescue, we see U.S. contractors and officers attached to the U.S. Embassy’s Office of Security Cooperation evacuating, creating the perception that the United States will not be there when you need us. Given all that we have invested in Iraq in U.S. blood and treasure, I find that really sad and frustrating.”
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